Making the transition to multiple hard drives with dual boot

Question

Hi I'm looking for tip or things to watch out for, while I make the following changes to my system:

I currently have a dual boot setup on one hard drive (win7 and ubuntu), I am going to change to a 60gb ssd, and 2 hard drives.

-SSD will have ubuntu /

-"Hard drive 1" will have ubuntu /home (although some bits will go back to ssd) -"Hard drive 2" will have win7

Here is my initial thoughts on how to do it: (Assuming I currently have "hard drive 2" only)

1- Move important files from ubuntu partition onto windows partition.

2- log into windows and expand the windows partition to fill hard drive 2, wiping my ubuntu install.

3- Install SSD and "hard drive 1" into computer, turn on computer and hope the computer recognises them... or whatever is supposed to happen

4 - Insert Ubuntu live cd, and install ubuntu / on ssd and ubuntu /home on "hard drive 1"

Does this sound like a good plan?

My major concern is what is going to happen to grub and bootloading during this process, is it all going to go wrong (I have minimal experience with grub and bootloader) e.g. during step 2.

Answer 1

Here are my tips, I did a similar move but without having Windows.

1 - maybe you should put your important files on a DVD/CD, partitions are easy to mess up

2 - yes, you can do that if you want all that disk for windows only. Optionally you can just keep that ubuntu partition unchanged and format it later for Ubuntu or Windows as you need.

3 - I've put my SSD on the first SATA channel and let the HDD on the second (I removed my second HDD, I had enough space without it anyway). At this point you don't have to care about grub, it is on your HDD. Your SSD has no boot record (yet). Optionally make sure your BIOS tries to boot from the first SATA channel (if you have such option).

4 - Install Ubuntu, it should automagically find your windows, too. Put grub on SSD's MBR (it's just a recommendation not a must, I like to keep it there). If windows is not found at install time, try to fix Grub with whatever utility Ubuntu has (I am not an Ubuntu user).

These would be my opinions for your situation.